I'm the assistant coach to several teams. I coach U8's, U14's and U16's. In all these groups I have encountered disgruntled parents and critical parents for a number of reasons, but they ultimately boil down to the same thing, they don't agree with the coaches decisions.
We have recently has a spate of parents approaching us after games to question our 'most valued player' award. We use the "MVP" as a motivational tool in each fo the three teams I work with. With the U8's its very much a motivational only selection and is often given to a player who has perhaps reached a specific target point in their development, had a tough period learning a skill and has suceeded at it, or was just an all round well beahved team player for example. My impression is that no matter what level or age group, this post match award is something that palyers look forward to and they often display a desire to to know what they might have done better or worked at harder to achieve the acolade. We give a trophy on a loan basis unti lthe next game but also award a medal that they can keep. Often, it's hard to ignore the player who may have saved the most shots or scored the most goals or maybe made the most tackles or passes and without having multiple post match awards to cater for all these events, we end up discussing who we with is most deserving of the acolade and then present it, encouraging the team to offer congratulations to that player with a clap, or a cheer where appropriate.
Now the problem. The parent group, of each of the three teams I'm working with all have somthing to say about the "man of the match". In their eyes, it's standard practice to award this to the player who has scored the most, or the best goal or similar. We have a few players at each of the groups who have a higher experience level and therefore regularily perform on matchday to a high standard in terms of footballing skills, time on the ball and making impacts on the game. We try to acknowledge this as often as possible but we also like to make sure that we have been inclusive to the rest of the group for the other reasons explained above. The parents don't like this when we award the MVP to say for example a player who has made really great progress in eyes as coaches but wasn't specifically the most impactful player on the pitch that day. This has recently gotten really confrontational, with parents surrounding the coaching team to demand answers as to why X or Y player didn't get the award. We tried to explain that we use the MVP as a recognition award as well as a motivational and inspirational technique but this simply isn't accepted by some parents and we find ourselves now dreading making the decision and have enven considered no longer doing it at all. We did also suggest to the parents that they could, if they wanted, invest in a trophy or award that is a 'parents MVP' so that they could issue this and leave us to issue ours. Needless to say, this hasn't happened and they persist in arguing with us about our selection.
Advice on how to handle this?
